Category: Connecticut

Salisbury After the Storm

adohertyh1 Comment

Winter arrived in the Northeast with maximum attitude: from 66ºF on Saturday morning to a full-on blizzard by Sunday. In Salisbury, CT, home of ski jumps and wood-lined hotel bars, we got to experience the odd dynamic of watching Porsche and Mercedes SUVs claw through the snow. The classic White Hart hotel was looking its best.

I tested my DJI Phantom 3 Advanced in the post-storm conditions. Almost-freezing, windy conditions didn’t have an impact on its flight performance, but the gimbal didn’t seem too thrilled. Some of its smooth elegance was lost… Or maybe it was just the wind.

Salisbury After the Storm

‘Neath the Elms

adohertyhLeave a comment

Summer on a college campus (with all of the energy of a reunion weekend) buzzes and burbles with the remembered excitement of perfect afternoons. On the quad of Trinity College, in the shadow of elm trees and the enormous Neo-Gothic chapel, this reaches its apex. I particularly enjoy the father and son talking on the bench in the foreground, adding a touch of the intimate to an otherwise crowded scene.

'Neath the Elms

Edge of the Big Forest

adohertyhLeave a comment

In this particular corner of Connecticut in early spring, the rain and snow combined to make the perfect storybook fog. This image is so quaint and charming, I could swear I’d seen it somewhere before.

But this brings me to another idea: those particular locations in landscape photography so scenic that they are literally ubiquitous. Take the tunnel view in Yosemite, or shots of the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin Headlands, or downtown Manhattan as seen from the top of Rockafeller Center as examples: is it even possible to make an original composition from such a photographically saturated place? But these places are also photographically saturated for a reason: they’re really, really pretty. Where does that trade-off between originality and beauty fall?

Edge of the Big Forest

Melting Landscape

adohertyh2 Comments

When the crust of winter slides off the landscape, the points and lines of the resting geometry beneath are exposed on foggy days like these. In Duchess County, where Connecticut meets New York, the density of the post-winter effect is damp. It has its own beauty, apart from snow-blasted winters or verdant summers. (And by contrast, this “melt season” represents a major chunk of the North Country’s spring attitude.)

Melting Landscape

Knight

adohertyhLeave a comment

This frozen moment of energy and will and concentration captures Lillie Keenan in the Grand Prix at the 2013 Fairfield County Hunt Club June Benefit Horse Show. Though it’s the incredible 2-meter jumps that really capture the attention in these events, for my moment, it’s the rocket acceleration leading up to a jump that makes for far more drama.

Knight

Long Walk Aliquot

adohertyh2 Comments

The last golden photons, their combination of diffuse and specular reflections bouncing from the windows of Trinity College’s Long Walk, are the perfect additions to the final moments of a crisp winter afternoon. This photo captures only a small section of the full stretch of Long Walk, which I still find rather astonishing.

Long Walk Aliquot

The Fall and the Pool

adohertyhLeave a comment

A year ago, I stood atop this waterfall in the corner of Connecticut, relaxing and hiking in the last few days before I traveled north to Canton to begin the faculty life. There are three things that this image captures:

  • So many waterfall pictures use a long exposure to smooth the water into some blurry, surreal, Platonic ideal of flow. The effect might be pretty, but that effect is also a lie about the true experience of the crashing and splashing. Let’s get some spray in here!
  • Poetically standing atop a waterfall in a wood, with a calming pool nearby, seems to me less a cliché than something that is consistently authentic across the American experience.
  • Nostalgia may power a lot of my images, but it’s a force that only works retroactively. I would feel very different about the image if I’d promptly slipped and trashed my camera. Can that “dodged danger” exist within the image itself?

The Fall and the Pool

Chapel by Night

adohertyh1 Comment

After a trip back to my alma mater, Trinity College, for reunion weekend (but not my reunion), I’ve had some time to process both my photographs and my feelings from the trip. Standard touchy/feely closure stuff—appreciating my time there, but recognizing that I’m glad I’ve moved on. (If you can call teaching at a different small liberal arts college moving on…) This image of Trinity’s awesome Neo-Gothic chapel is reflective of two things: first, of the imposing nature of the structure, and second, the way in which its white stone can take on many colors depending on the available light. Perhaps that flexibility is an overly-obvious symbol of how feelings for a place can shift with time.

Chapel by Night

Home Books

adohertyh2 Comments

All of the other posts this week have been about surreal half-worlds of alienation and pensive detachment. I’d like Friday to be about something warmer, cheerier, and generally less dark: the concept of home. Without resorting to too much cliché, home can be in the shape of the windows or the parallel lines of painted floor boards, but it can also be seeing the same books in the bookcase that were there when you were a child. They were there then, and they’re still there now, and even if, “You can never go home,” you can always go back to the idea and the place and the books will be there.

Home Books